Stop the World
by kennagirl
Summary: As much as she hated fighting, it would be nice to go somewhere that she wouldn't be expected to take up a mantle. She liked the sciences, but going into botany would probably result in an Incident. Thinking that an entirely clean slate might be good, she changed her name and Caitlin Layla Snow became a biology major at Keystone University.


_**A/N:** For Nickie, on her 25th birthday, since she agreed with me that the lack of fic taking advantage of this crossover opportunity is disappointing._

 _I have never written for either of these fandoms before, so please be kind._

 _Title from "I Melt With You" by Bowling for Soup, because there is no song that reminds me more of Sky High. Also, portions of the dialogue are taken from The Flash 1x10._

* * *

She was just as surprised as everyone else to find out that they all lived in a pocket dimension. When Principal Powers sat them all down at the end of junior year, they thought it was just going to be a talk about applying to colleges, not the news that the rest of the world knew nothing about superheroes and battling giant robots in the streets every other Tuesday.

Granted, that did impact what they could write about in their admissions essays, but it still wasn't the talk she thought they'd be getting.

She decided she didn't want to stay in Maxville. As much as she hated fighting, it would be nice to go somewhere that she wouldn't be expected to take up a mantle. She liked the sciences, but going into botany would probably result in an Incident. Thinking that an entirely clean slate might be good, she changed her name and Caitlin Layla Snow became a biology major at Keystone University.

Her relationship with Warren lasted until she came home for Christmas during her freshman year. The couple went out to eat for their third anniversary and came home single. The distance was just too hard, with Caitlin in Keystone and Warren in Maxville, but they had been friends before they got together and they would be friends again.

She got into bioengineering and focused on her studies, then on her job at STAR Labs. She met Ronnie and fell in love, not the puppy love she felt for Will or even the comfortable love she felt for Warren, but big, terrifying, forever love. She met Cisco and found another brother, the kind she hadn't had since high school. When Ronnie asked her to marry him, she said yes.

She didn't tell them about Maxville or Layla Williams. She didn't know how.

The particle accelerator exploded and everything changed, even if she didn't know it yet.

A little over a year later and Caitlin was once again living in a world of superheroes and battling in the streets. They hadn't reached giant robots every other Tuesday yet, but it was only a matter of time. She felt better about helping from the labs than she ever would have out in the field. It helped that it was Barry she was helping, a good person who wanted to contain the threats more than eliminate them. Nothing against the heroes she grew up with, but there is a certain level of desensitizing that happens in that kind of world. She hoped it wouldn't arrive too soon in this one.

Once it became clear that she was officially going to be hero support, she pulled out some formulas from her almost-forgotten Super Statistics course to figure out how long it would take her to get kidnapped. Unfortunately, Caitlin didn't account for Leonard Snart's obsessive tendencies, and she was grabbed two weeks before the earliest point of the likely timeframe she had calculated. She knew better than to attempt escape during transport, since that would probably end in road rash and the two villains putting her back in the van. Instead, she played along through that ridiculous video (because dramatic monologues were not restricted to Maxville apparently) and let herself be led to the chair to be tied down, brain racing through all the escape techniques she had learned as she kept Rory talking.

"You and this Flash must be really close if you're willing to die for him, hmm?"

It was that face, the one he made on "close" that brought her back to the moment. He didn't see the Flash's doctor, or even a member of the team. He saw the Girl, the Love Interest.

The Damsel in Distress.

She may have been a sidekick but she was not a fucking damsel.

"You want me to show you who you really are? That'd be fun."

He traced the charged gun up the line of her body.

"Show you who you… really are."

The gun drew level with her head and she glared along the barrel to his face.

"You think I've never played with fire before?"

He raised an eyebrow at her, smirking, like she was a kitten trying to show she had claws.

"Freshman year, a guy tried to light someone on fire in the middle of the cafeteria. I got him to take me to homecoming." She smiled, all teeth. "He looked real good in a tux. Apparently his dad didn't have much use for it in solitary."

Rory scoffed. "So you nabbed a guy who acted out because of daddy issues with his pops in the can. Plenty of kids of incompetent crooks out there."

"I'll be sure to let Barron Battle know you think so highly of him."

It was a bit of a gamble, but according to Warren, his dad had left Maxville at one point and spent some time in Iron Heights, raising more than his share of hell before he was "transferred." If prison storytelling worked like Warren and Barry told her it did, there was a good chance Rory had heard the rumors at some point.

The way his eyes widened suggested he had, but Snart called him away and she was left bound and gagged sitting on a bomb. Not for the first time since she had been kidnapped, she regretted leaving the living terrarium necklace she had received from Etsy the day before on her kitchen table. There wasn't a single scrap of plant life in the building for her to ask for help, which is the exact situation she had bought the trinket for in the first place.

The good news was that it wasn't long before Cisco and Joe came to her rescue. The bad news was that they almost blew her up in the process. She was laying on the concrete floor, feeling like a Save the Citizen doll, when she told Cisco, "I thought I was gonna die."

"Not while I'm around." He nodded at Joe. "Or him." He tilted his head. "Or the not-Ronnie with fireball powers who showed up at the labs to help. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

Caitlin laughed, because of course he did. He told her he'd be keeping an ear out for Central City news in case they needed a hand. "I'll explain later."

Since she had been seen on television as a hostage, Joe had to bring her in to give a statement. On the way, they listened to the radio play-by-play of Barry's fight against the villainous duo. When she didn't hear any mention of another fire handler, she asked Cisco about it. "He said something about trying to stay off the radar and that he would be back up if things got out of hand. If all goes well, he'll meet us back at the labs."

Even with the heads up from Cisco, she was somehow surprised to see him standing in the cortex, chatting with Dr. Wells. "Warren."

He turned and grinned when he saw her. "Layla."

She hadn't spoken to Warren since just before Christmas. She'd called him to let him know that her fiancé was alive and could light himself on fire. Warren had laughed at her and the irony, until he heard the tears in her voice and switched to comforting her.

It was that comfort that she got now, running into the arms of the second most important man in her life (sorry, Cisco) and jumping onto her toes for a hug, one that he easily returned.

"I thought you said you ran the numbers," he muttered into her hair.

"Snart went from a Class IV working alone to a Class II with a partner," she responded. "I was supposed to have at least two more weeks."

"Well I'll be sure to tell Mrs. Gebra to take a few points off your transcript," he laughed, letting her go. "You know, for someone who wanted to get away from all this, you've got a set up that would make Medulla cry. Either from pride or jealousy."

She smiled at him. "And I'm sure you'll tell him all about it at the next staff meeting, won't you Mr. Guidance Counselor?"

"Uh, Caitlin?"

Looking back towards the door, she realized Cisco, Joe, and Barry were all watching her curiously. Even Dr. Wells looked somewhere between interested and frustrated, probably because she'd been keeping secrets. She'd been keeping secrets for a long time, trying to keep her two worlds separate, but she could feel the inevitable coming.

"You wanna tell us what's going on?"

Her worlds were colliding, and she was going to let it happen, ready or not.

So she opened her mouth and told them.


End file.
